A New Freedom

It seems I have been waiting a very long time to end my SIF/family building journey. So unbelievable in some ways that in a weeks time, it will all be over!

Relief has been the main feeling I've felt for the last few months. Relief that life can soon/now be about different things - other things.

I had coffee with a friend this weekend who is going through primary infertility. How nice it was to be able to share with her that there is an end to it all - an end to the emotional torture, regardless of whether a baby comes or not.

We purchased some bunks this week for our spare room. When we bought our house two years ago, one of the reasons was because it was a three bedroom home and could accommodate our hoped-for family-of-four. The social worker from Adoption Services came round and inspected our place. She ticked it off as been a good home for an adopted child.

So for the two years we've lived here, our spare room has been an in-between room - a room that might one day be decorated or kitted out for our addition.

Now that that isn't going to happen, we've accepted that our spare room is a guest room/office (aka my "woman-cave"!). It's not the biggest of rooms so the bunks fit perfectly for guests and I have space to write in the office and do whatever else I want to do (blog, use Facebook...)

The closure around this era feels good. I'm certainly ready for it and embracing it - the end of an era.

There are changes ahead.  I was sharing with the friend going through primary infertility how small my world became when dealing with secondary infertility/going through premature menopause. Well my world is opening up again and I just want to embrace and enjoy life.

I am not happy in my job and am making steps towards finding another one. I have decided I want to do teacher aiding as it fits in with school hours and working with special needs children has always been an interest of mine, even before I was a Mum and ended up with a daughter with autism - that is simply one of life's ironies. 

My current part-time job is demanding and unrewarding in so many ways.  I am done with it. I want to teacher-aide and then find time in my week to write, write, write - because at the moment that (writing) isn't happening as much as I'd like it to. My brain is too full with the stress of my job and I am exhausted a lot with my husband working 12 hour days. 

I want and deserve a more balanced life - especially after enduring a disappointment (understatement) like the one I've been through - 5.5 years of pining is too bloody long, if you ask me. And not in character with how I usually respond to life's u-turns. Normally I get it quite fast in the piece - I back paddle out of situations that don't appear to be working for me. But not with SIF. It was just something I couldn't let go of for a very long time.

But I have no regrets. I TTC, used fertility drugs and went through the adoption process for another child and nothing worked. I can't say I didn't try or didn't give it my best shot.

Now that I have a conclusion, I finally feel I can sit down and spend some time writing my book about my experience. Even though I've been blogging on this topic for four years, and I've wanted to write a book about it for some time and have started editing my blog; I did need an ending to give me a perspective of some sort. I like that I can offer a tale of stamina, strength and honesty based on not getting what I wanted.

I've met a few women - mainly online but also some in real life (through the infertility support group I started), who once they got pregnant after a time of infertility, hoped and even believed that I would too - or later down the track,  believed that we would get picked as adoptive parents. I wanted to have the faith these women had for me after their dreams were realised but I guess at some point reality hit and I knew the chances of me joining them were incredibly slim, for reasons known only by God.

When I drove past Adoption Services this week I could only think it was meant to be part of our journey - going through the adoption process. I learnt a lot and healed too around not being able to have a biological child at that time. I know I could raise a child that wasn't biologically ours now. I probably always could have done that, but after having a biological child it did take a while to make that leap.

Now I'm in a position of seeing the word's children in a different way - it's not just about mothering our own, it's about mothering those that come to us. I know with teacher aiding I will bond with children in some amazing ways. I've been there before, a lifetime ago before I was a mother myself - nurturing children with special needs. I guess this is the direction I am meant to be heading in.

The Final Countdown...

Wow, 14 days to go until our adoption fire expires. Two weeks to go until we will be finally done and dusted with this long, painful and frustrating period of our lives.

I know once we're officially out of the pool of prospective adoptive parents, I will be able to move on and make sense of things.

Over the last few days our seven year old daughter has been asking about siblings again. When she asked today I had to say that we weren't picked - that there were lots of families to choose from and they were all different so there were lots of choices for the families adopting out. I'm not sure how much of it she got. She just wanted a chance to be a "big sister".

As I walked back from the fish and chip shop tonight, I saw two siblings (one is in my daughter's class) playing happily together on a trampoline. I know our daughter is missing out, not having a sibling in so many ways. I have to try extra hard to provide her with play dates so that she is around other children as much as possible. This is easier said than done when autism is added to the mix.

Who knows how things might have gone had another child being added to our family. If it had happened biologically, perhaps we may have ended up with a second child with autism. That could have been a possibility. Or if we'd adopted, who knows what the dynamic between our daughter and another sibling would have been like. I know from the families I know with autistic children that their siblings are affected and things can be tricky. But at the same time, family is family and to have a sibling that loves you for you; that is priceless.

I spoke to a very close friend today who went through primary infertility and went on to try for another child but it didn't happen - she reached the end of the road recently with that. So we were able to share about our journey's and the relief we felt at being at the end of it all. We tried to be positive about it all, as best as we could.

I packed up some of my daughter's old clothes today to post to one of my sister-in-law's who has three children. It's all her size six and seven clothing. I always find it to be a little heart-wrenching saying goodbye to her old things - things that represent different eras that I'll never get back, especially because she's my only one.

Now my daughter is seven she seems like such a big-little girl - no longer a new entrant at school and so sophisticated in her thinking and speech in lots of ways.

Even though I am reflecting back a bit as we approach the end of the road with this journey; I am also looking forward. I just want life to be as fun and as light as possible after all the heaviness and seriousness of the last five and a half years. Life is short and I can't stop life throwing me a lemon every now and then. But I can enjoy the good bits and make the most of things the way they are.

Adoption File Expires in 3 Weeks!

Finally it's April 2012. The month and the year in which this five and a half year chapter in my life finishes. At long-bloody-last!!

I'm well over it. And in many ways I have moved on - emotionally and spiritually. I've carried on with my life and gone on to live it as a Family Of Three. Who knows when exactly I determined that it was best to stop hoping and dreaming for A Family Of Four. I guess it happened in stages. I just couldn't do it to myself anymore.

I've found a new freedom in accepting what wasn't meant to be. Though admittedly a little part of me - (so very, very small) - wonders if at the end of all this, at the eleventh hour, if we might get "The Phone-Call." That is, the call they talk about during the adoption process where the social worker apparently starts the call with "Are you sitting down?" Because what follows are the words that those couples (and singles) in the pool of prospective adoptive parents dream about "You've been picked!" (by a birth family.)

I'm not going to pretend I haven't played out that scenario and had visions of us all hopping into in the car off to some part of the country to collect "our baby." Moments of intense emotion have been anticipated too around taking home "our baby" while comforting the Birth Mum.

Yep, I have lived in hope and fantasy for a very long time.

So in three weeks time I genuinely am pleased that I can finally rid my hands free of secondary infertility. Because by that point I will no longer be TTC, trying fertility treatments. undergoing surgery or waiting for a baby to be adopted into our family in order for our family to feel complete. Secondary infertility will not be relevant - and hopefully will be very much redundant in my life. Because life will no longer be about trying to add to our family or trying to change what perhaps wasn't meant to be.

This period of time is significant not just because our adoption file is about to expire, but because I can now officially say I've been through "The Change." Yep, at 43 I am post-menopausal. I am finally on the other side of what was a very difficult transition - mainly because I did want another child but also because I was only 38 years old when I started going into premature menopause.

Our daughter is now seven years old. She was just 18 months old when I TTC for the second time. Most of her life has been about trying to add to our family. I always told her when she was seven we'd know whether a baby was coming to us or not. In three weeks time, when our adoption file finally expires, I will be able to give her that closure.

She hasn't asked about another sibling for a while. Perhaps her needs have changed or she's accepted her status as an only child. She gets lonely at times and my heart breaks during those moments. But she also, with her autism, needs a lot of space and quiet times. Maybe being an only child is what was best for her - even though it wasn't what I wanted.

We've had my husband's brother staying with us for the last six weeks. It has been challenging for all of us sharing our small three bedroomed home. Fostering for now remains something that may or may not be looked into further in the future. Perhaps it would be too disruptive - especially if it wasn't permanent. For now it doesn't feel like the right track to go down.

I think for anyone who has been through a loss and survived, the only way to move is forward. That is where I've been headed for a while now. But our upcoming closure in three weeks will help me further. I know I will really be able to get my teeth stuck into other dreams - such as writing my book about secondary infertility - once I've been set free.

I've learnt so much over the last five and half years. I know that my experience with SIF is more than just the death of a dream. It has been about opening up to the lessons offered when life throws a lemon - to allow myself to grow emotionally and spiritually at those times. I have mainly learnt that life is imperfect and that the bumps come along at any time. For that reason, I have given up fighting life and am accepting things the way they are - no matter how uncomfortable that is at times.